Moses Obeid

The ICAC investigations into the dodgy union and ALP ratbags is fascinating. They even hired a private investigator to follow and dig up dirt on journalists who were exposing their crooked behaviour:

A BARRISTER appearing for an allegedly corrupt player in the current ICAC inquiry asked me this week if I had seen House of Cards, an English political thriller in which conservative politician Francis Urquhart deploys blackmail and other nefarious methods to achieve his political ambitions.

There were two things I recalled about the program, and one of them was that the journalist met with a sticky end, still clutching her tape recorder as she fell to her death.

It was therefore with some disquiet that I learnt one of the central figures who has appeared at the recent Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry approached a private detective to have me followed.

The private eye, who doesn’t want to be named, thought I had better know that in mid-2012 Moses Obeid came to his office wanting his family’s homes and businesses swept for ICAC bugs. The other thing he wanted was ”to have you placed under surveillance”, the investigator said.

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The ALP really is full of dodgy union connected ratbags:

The son of ALP powerbroker Eddie Obeid has admitted that the former resources minister Ian Macdonald provided him with a list of mining companies which included the name of a company which went on to win six of 11 licences subsequently put to tender by the government.

And Moses Obeid conceded that his father, who was head of the faction which picked the ALP’s last three state premiers, had been kept informed of negotiations to sell a family farm which sat within one of these licence tenements: “We were not going to hide from him that the family farm was going to be sold … He knew about it.”  Read more »

Corruption allegations and investigations into dodgy unionists and labour politicians are coming to a head in Australia and the body blows are mounting.

At least in Australia they have an Independent Commission Against Corruption to investigate these allegations. Here in New Zealand our police seem reluctant to even investigate dodgy politicians.

PART ONE of the trilogy of corruption inquiries starring former Labor ministers will get under way today in a purpose-built hearing room to accommodate a battalion of barristers who, over the next five months, will represent more than 70 witnesses.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption’s three-part inquiry is expected to be one of the most sensational in NSW history and will examine explosive corruption allegations against the former ministers Eddie Obeid, Ian Macdonald and Eric Roozendaal.

Also on the witness list are three former premiers – Morris Iemma, Kristina Keneally and Nathan Rees – along with senior ministers including Frank Sartor.

Mr Roozendaal, who is the only one of the three Labor heavyweights still in Parliament, will feature in the first of the inquiries, which will start at 10am and is expected to run for a week.

Operation Indus will investigate the circumstances in which Moses Obeid, one of the five sons of the former minister, provided a brand new Honda CRV to Mr Roozendaal, the then minister for commerce and roads.

The first witness scheduled to give evidence is a Camperdown panel beater, Peter Fitzhenry, who will be followed by a car dealer, Keith Goodman.

The pair are expected to provide details of Moses Obeid’s 2007 request that the pair source a black Honda CRV for Mr Roozendaal but to put the car in the name of Nata Re.

Once Mr Roozendaal had taken delivery of the Honda, Moses Obeid organised the $44,000 payment from an account of his business partner, the property developer Rocco Triulcio.

Nata Re is the sister of Mr Triulcio. Mrs Re has previously told Fairfax Media that she had never owned a Honda CRV and that she had never heard of Eric Roozendaal.

This isn;t going to end well for Labor.